DRIVEN: 2005 MINI Cooper S Convertible

Story and photos by Michael Banovsky

If your body isn’t getting certain nutrients, it’ll start throwing itself at all the things needed to get them. Pasty white people, like me, always get dragged into the heat at the first lick of summer to get burned – by our sun-craving bodies, no less. So saying I was looking forward to the 2005 Mini Cooper S Convertible is a sort of understatement. My body craved it.

First impressions confirmed that whenever zee-Germans decide to allow us some fun, it’s spoiled (deliberately) by something. In the Mini it’s the number of buttons, switches, and clicky-things all over the interior. I really only need four things: a door handle, window and headlight switches, and the button to start tanning.
When you take an artist’s sketch of a funky, retro-inspired interior and try to add BMW-levels of functionality, it just doesn’t work. The inside should be more Cooper than 7-Series, thanks.

The button to start tanning actually has two settings. The first acts like a sunroof and retracts the top just enough to burn your legs. The second setting is all SPF30. The sunroof setting, though, is a tad useless. I used it once under threatening skies and it turns the car into a vacuum bag for sucking in road grime.
Should I even mention the laughable rear seats?

But starting the little supercharged 1.6L inline 4-cylinder engine makes all of the criticism go away. It sounds awesome – and there’s even a bit of backfiring built in.

It’s the little-engine-that-could quality that I admire most. For example, when the hood is open and the engine revved, it shakes about and looks (if you squint enough) like a heart, beating away. Brilliant.

Launching this car is awesome. The clutch is tight and progressive, and the last car I drove with a floor-hinged accelerator was my father’s Porsche 914 2.0. But the Mini has power that the little Porsche only dreamed of. 0-100km/h comes up in 7.4 seconds – surely only because 1st gear is so short and requires a shift into 2nd.
With the traction control off – let me tell you – the front tires smoke like Bob Dylan.



But turning off the electronic nanny yields a nice surprise while cornering. I was skeptical of all the praise heaped upon the Mini’s chassis, but now I know it’s for real.

The car can be setup to under or oversteer, depending on the corner and driver skill. Lifting off mid-corner puts the rear of the car into a controllable slide. Yum. And don’t assume that these antics require hooligan-ish speeds. No, it’s just all fun, all of the time.

I was asking people during the week how much they thought the Mini cost and – you’re all wrong. With a base price of $36,500 plus the sport ($1800) and premium ($1,750) packages – and white bonnet stripes ($130) – the car rings in at $40,180. It’s a little much, really.

Besides, the people who will most likely buy the Mini will have to choose between it and time at a tanning salon – I couldn’t imagine an enthusiast could forgive the cowl shake. Just go out and buy the hatchback, with its better rigidity and performance.

After all, pasty white people like me are really craving speed and not sun.